Driveway Conversations and First Representations: Normalizing LGBTQ+ Identities and Families
By Dani Glass
I was probably five or six, in the mid- to late-90s. My mom and I were getting out of the car in the driveway, and I asked her if a boy could marry a boy or a girl could marry a girl. She responded, “They can love each other, but they can’t get married.” All I remember feeling is confusion – not even disappointment – just confusion. My young, sheltered, not-yet-indoctrinated-into-politics-or-laws brain synonymized love and marriage. I remember thinking about my Uncle Mike and Aunt Nancy and about my Uncle Bob and Uncle Dennis. Each pair went together – how could one love each other and be married but not the other?
At the time, I dropped the subject because although I sensed that there was more to it, I also got the sense that it was just one of those adult things that didn’t seem to make very much sense.
And as a kid, there are a lot of those – adults just don’t live by the same rules and conventions as kids do. Kids tend to understand what makes sense, or what is right versus wrong, without complicating it too much. Don’t get me wrong, children are fully capable of understanding nuance and ambiguity, they just don’t bother complicating anything more than necessary. So when I learned a fact about love and marriage that seemed not to make sense, I wrote it off as an unnecessarily complicated adult problem.
Twenty-some years later, I understand the political and religious history behind the experiences of love and marriage. I have context, which I didn’t have as a child, and I have more developed views on love and on the institution of marriage as a whole, but my childlike confusion stands its ground: Why does the identity of the people in a loving relationship matter?
I don’t remember ever being explicitly told that my Uncle Bob and Uncle Dennis – who were family even though we weren’t technically related – were gay. But that didn’t matter so much; they were accepted for who they were by my family, and I loved them like family. I knew they were together the same way my aunts and uncles were together. What I find more problematic is that I never knew the term for who they were. Even in a liberal family and relatively progressive community, I wondered for years what “gay” meant and why people got weird about using it in front of kids. I’d never really been sheltered from “swear words,” so what was so bad about “gay”?
Long after I understood what it meant, and even before I fully understood it about myself, I carried the weight of being what nobody seemed willing to even name. Had perfectly acceptable labels like gay, lesbian, or queer – along with their perfectly acceptable meaning – been in my wheelhouse as a young child, perhaps self-acceptance or pride would have been more tangible or within reach. Had children’s literature or media incorporated queer identities and labels into its mainstream content, perhaps I would have recognized myself and felt more comfortable in my own skin. I wonder the same about countless others, who experience difficulty expressing queer identities. I wonder, “How much harder are these conversations made because individuals lack the basic vocabulary to begin?” (Young, 2019, p. 67).
Language provides a way to recognize ourselves, a way to think about and describe what we feel and who we are. While labels aren’t everything, they can provide powerful meaning in the ways we understand and identify ourselves. Many people fear that talking to children about big topics like gender or race puts ideas about gender or race into their heads. However, this is far from the case; children notice and comment on gender roles and stereotypes, different types of families, racial differences and inequalities, and much more as young as two or three. Providing them with proper and respectful language does not give them ideas or confuse them; it helps them understand themselves and the world around them, and it helps them learn to engage respectfully and inclusively in their observations and conversations about these issues.
Quality representation – in language and a variety of other forms – is crucial to the self-acceptance, self-esteem, and mental health of young children. Rudine Bishop’s (1990) theory of books as both mirrors and windows is a particularly telling metaphor. As a mirror, representation in media and literature can be “a means of self-affirmation” (p. 1), helping children in marginalized groups, who may feel left out of the mainstream culture (due to a myriad of social identities such as gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, ability, and socio-economic status) see themselves and who they can be. It also helps them feel recognized and appreciated by their society. As a window, representation helps more socially privileged children understand and see their more marginalized peers as part of the “norm.” This, in turn, helps students in marginalized groups feel safer. LGBTQ students, for example, are far more likely to feel safe in school when the curriculum includes LGBTQ voices and literature (Batchelor, K., Ramos, M., & Nieswander, S., 2018).
Representation – high quality representation reflective of varied and intersectional identities – in children’s literature is beneficial for all children because it helps them understand and see both themselves and others for who they are and for their potential. At the least, it prepares children for the variety of people they will encounter in school and throughout life. At the most, it helps children feel a sense of safety, belonging, and opportunity.
However, representation is more than just a story or two about someone who is “different” in some way. As Chimamanda Adichie (2009) reflects, using a “single story” to characterize an entire community can be dangerous because it can pigeonhole members into that one story or identity and create stereotypes. Quality representation consists of many examples of many different people who are connected to that community or group. Identity does not exist in a vacuum; a person is not just a boy, not just queer, or Black, or Mexican. A person is not just a student or an athlete or a farmer or a scientist. Our identities are intersectional, and quality representation reflects these nuances. While the world may never be fully rid of prejudice, one way we can begin to normalize diversity is by providing quality representation in the literature children experience in school. With the proper resources and representation we can raise a new generation of children who feel confident in themselves and who value and respect the diverse experiences of others. By drawing on the political and social progress we have made as well as the scores of talented artists, actors, teachers, leaders, and authors who are part of marginalized communities or are fierce allies, we can provide children with the representation they need and deserve.
While ideally, representation takes many forms (books, role models, television, movies, or music, for example), it can even take the form of a conversation about its absence. Children often don’t have the context to question something that is missing, but they are extremely receptive when it comes up in conversation. While I don’t think there was anything wrong about my mom’s response to my question in the driveway, I wonder how my experience might have changed had the conversation gone, “While two boys or two girls can’t get married, they can still love each other and live together and be a family.” I wonder what would have happened if we had gone into the house and my mom had read me one of my books, substituting a second mom or a second dad into the family in the story. I wonder what would have happened had I experienced more representation in language; had the conversation gone something like, “Two boys or two girls can’t get married, but they can still love each other. That means they’re gay. Uncle Bob and Uncle Dennis are gay.” Using correct language, labels, and terms helps children understand because it makes it feel more real, and when something feels real, it is easier to connect with. Bishop (1990) says, “[Representation can] help us to understand each other better by helping to change our attitudes towards difference.
When there are enough books available that can act as both mirrors and windows for all our children, they will see that we can celebrate both our differences and our similarities, because together they are what make us all human” (p. 2). When children see their identity represented by other people and in media and literature, they will feel more comfortable expressing facets of their own identity. And the more authentically they can express themselves, the more they will feel empowered to understand more deeply, act more confidently, dream bigger, and achieve more.
References
Adichie, C.N. (2009). The danger of a single story [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.
Batchelor, K. E., Ramos, M., & Neiswander, S. (2018). Opening Doors: Teaching LGBTQ-themed Young Adult Literature for an Inclusive Curriculum. Clearing House, 91(1), 29–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/00098655.2017.1366183.
Bishop, R. S. (1990). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom, 6, 9–11. Retrieved from https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf.
Young, C. A. (2019). Interrogating the Lack of Diversity in Award-Winning LGBTQ-Inclusive Picturebooks. Theory Into Practice, 58(1), 61–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2018.1536915.